The current exhibition dialogues with and concludes the previous show of work by the same artist that opened in the gallery on July 2 this year, dedicated to her early black and white photographs taken in Boston between 1970 and 1974.
Its follow-up concentrates on more recent work produced from 2014 to the present, produced using a technique for which she is not known at all - drawing.
Although Nan Goldin has been drawing consistently for some years, she has always considered the results very private, and they have rarely been seen outside the circle of her closest friends or outside her studio. We are therefore extremely proud to be able to offer to the public a part of the artist’s oeuvre never shown together before.
The exhibition brings together 25 drawings produced using different techniques on different weights and sizes of paper, each different from the other. Nan Goldin’s drawings are the result of a blend of extreme freedom and bold compositional and chromatic design; the act of drawing serving as a kind of drug for the soul secretly and constantly conversing with her photography, which in many respects it exalts and brings to a conclusion.
The more quickly executed drawings could almost be diary entries sketched with a pen, brush or felt pen; others are more carefully meditated, charged with repentance and conveyed using techniques rather new to her. While unhampered by experience or the academy, each one does however seem to thrive on its own clear sensibility, strong identity and her hand.
Governed by a sort of automatic writing, the themes and subjects of the drawings vary from diary-like commentary to self-portraiture, as well as spreading into a dreamlike dimension capable of conjuring up ghosts and obsessions.
Choosing the work to be included in this small body of drawings was particularly hard, as the aim was that of creating a selection of work from, as we have said, a rather large volume (it is her custom to draw every day) that could condense recurring expressive means she has gradually made her own; spotlight a piece that gave rise to small cycles of work, or was sparked by a meeting, by a trip, or by a particular state of mind.
For some years now, drawing has become an extremely important contemplative exercise for Nan Goldin that occupies her days (or better, nights); she perseveres with marked discretion and a certain understandable reluctance, with regard to judgement by others, to the point that the decision to present this work to the public neither an easy or automatic one. It is therefore with great pleasure but also great care and respect that we have embarked together on this exploration into a fragile and unexplored universe, albeit vibrant with energy and focused determination.
Her drawings should in no way be considered a solipsistic and educated parenthesis: they is part of her natural urge to tell and share.